Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood fights on…

Not willing to just go away...

Jim Hood continues to do battle with Ken Feinberg, administrator of the GCCF claims fund.

At issue right now is jurisdiction of a lawsuit filed by Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood against the GCCF, where the Attorney General is asking Ken to comply with a subpoena and allow Hood to look behind the GCCF’s magic curtain to find out how these claims are being processed.

In response, Ken Feinberg filed a motion to remove the lawsuit to Federal Court, saying jurisdiction can and should be changed because this is a civil matter and the Deepwater Horizon exploded on the Outer Continental Shelf, but this past week, Jim Hood filed a motion to keep the lawsuit inside the Mississippi Court system. Hood argues his lawsuit came not as a civil matter, but as an attempt to enforce a subpoena that Feinberg had ignored, and since it is not a civil matter, its jurisdiction cannot be moved: “The state of Mississippi has not filed a substantive complaint stating a cause of action and requesting relief; therefore, it has not initiated a civil action in this matter,” Hood’s motion says, “The attorney general is engaged in a strictly pre-litigation investigation of the activities of the GCCF and Mr. Feinberg pursuant to the attorney general’s duty under the Mississippi Consumer Protection Act.”

Beyond this, it can be argued the GCCF is meant to compensate people damaged by the oil as it approached and reached Mississippi shores and fishing waters, which is quite the distance from the Outer Continental Shelf. Also, the GCCF operations Hood is asking to take a look at are operating within the state of Mississippi, not out in the Gulf.

It could also be argued Feinberg’s motion is simply an attempt to get this case to a kinder, more gentle court, one not so directly linked to Mississippians.

Of course Ken would deny this, just as he would deny he’s trying to stall this case out, much in the way he would deny he’s been stalling most things GCCF related for the past year, perhaps in this case hoping to have US Attorney General Eric Holder’s audit deflate Hood’s support or lay the groundwork to preempt his suit or give cause for Feinberg to criticize Hood for wasting Mississippi’s time and resources when that Federal audit is already in the planning stages.

Key word being : Federal.

Not the states, not Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, or Florida, but Federal, where people have always been kinder to career bureaucrats and politicians masquerading as lawyers.

And ultimately, what are we really talking about here, still?

Transparency.

The Gulf Coast deserves it and Feinberg is trying to control it, keeping people from looking too closely at what the GCCF is doing. If everything’s so on the up and up as Feinberg has maintained, what is the problem here? Certainly not the confidentiality of records. The claimants involved in Hood’s action have already given permission for Hood to look at their records. Feinberg’s games need to end, because the claimants caught within his legal maneuvering need justice, fairness and the assurance they have been screwed only once, by British Petroleum, and not twice, by British Petroleum and Ken Feinberg.